Jennifer Lopez Quietly Plots Her Oscars Comeback After Heartbreaking 'Hustlers' Snub

Jennifer Lopez isn’t taking any chances this award show season; she’s gunning for her Oscar nomination.

Her upcoming movie musical, Kiss of the Spider Woman, will be out Oct. 10, and she’s ready for her closeup. According to Gold Derby, Lopez will be mounting a campaign for the Best Supporting Actress category for the 2026 Oscars. Even though many people will see her role in the upcoming film as a star vehicle, there are award show strategists who calculate where Lopez’s best odds for a nomination — and this is where they want her.

In 2020, Lopez was heartbroken to learn she didn’t get a nomination for Hustlers, even though she was considered a shoo-in. “The truth is, I really started to think I was gonna get nominated. I got my hopes up because so many people were telling me I would be. And then it didn’t happen,” she said in her 2022 Netflix documentary, Halftime.

“I had to ask myself, ‘What does that mean?’ I do this not for an award or do my hits up there and seem like I’m the best performer in the world,” said Lopez. “No, I do this to tell stories and to effect change and to connect with people and make them feel things because I wanna feel something. That’s why I do it. Because I actually wanna make the world a better place in my own little way.”

The disappointment was real, and Lopez wasn’t ashamed to admit it. “I got so many good notices — more than ever in my career,” she explained at Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 Vision: Your Life In Focus Tour, per People. “Most of my team has been with me for years. I think they had a lot of hopes on that. They wanted it too, and I felt like I let everybody down a little bit.”

“I needed to go through the Oscar snub, the Super Bowl being, you know, what it is — all of the things that I went through in the last year.” Lopez shared that she had her own “ah-ha moment” while working through the setback. “‘Oh my God, I don’t need that. I’m actually here and I am okay, and I am enough. I don’t need this award right here to tell me I’m enough. I don’t need it.'”

Still, Lopez wants that Oscar nomination, and she’s hoping that her role as Ingrid Luna/Aurora/The Spider Woman will be the key to unlocking that dream. She’s ready, but is Hollywood?

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